A Truth?
by Delas
Summary: Many things can happen. We are only human, after all. If you run away, you can still come back, right? Does that make it better, in the end? Drabble, has very little or nothing to do with the summary. But has some Iruka and Kakashi...


**I don't even know. Morbid much? Inane. Fractured. ****Arg**

* * *

**A truth.**

It twisted his insides, forced groans past his lips that sounded like inhuman wails of some dying monster, and wretched convulsions seized him, as if a liquid fire was racing through his veins in a dangerous jumble, threatening to tear him apart from the inside out.

_You should not be when I am not_

It almost seemed another world when his fuzzy mind tried to grasp it, like a drunken man fumbling for the reason why he was facedown in some grungy back alley. The question ate at him, took every shred of what he remembered and turned it back as false. He couldn't tell in that single instant what had happened and what hadn't. He didn't know who he was, why he was lying against the harsh earth, or why his hands had the dirty rusty color of blood long dried and flaked off. It was simultaneously horrifying and comforting.

But Iruka was nothing if not _shinobi_, whatever that word had come to mean. Old reflexes made his hands press to the ground and lift up that thing which was his body, as trembling and cold as it was. Thoughts that were not his own prompted him to stand on feet weary beyond endurance. And it was the tears on his cheeks that propelled him forward with awkward swaying steps, towards that thing

_Kakashi_

lying in the dirt several strides away. The distance between him and his goal yawned before him as a wide chasm, and his heart quailed in his chest. The autopilot that had taken him over protested in its halfhearted way, it's too far it said

_Not it's not walk damn you walk_

there was no steel left to make it. But his feet and legs were moving anyway, movements beyond his control and understanding. He stumbled forward, those wretched sounds still escaping his lips.

In the eternity it took him to reach the thing lying in the churned soil, his mind contemplated things. Contemplated how he came to be here, "_To be Hokage you must love the people"_, contemplated how it came to be this way, "_Comrades, is what I think" _but above these petty things he found himself thinking, with an intensity foreign to him, why the sky was so goddamn blue.

_why everything was so covered in red_

Iruka didn't make it to the body lying in the sand. Blood from wounds he no longer noticed carved a small river in the sand as he had walked those few strides, before his legs trembled and folded with a finality that couldn't be denied. A kunai fell from nerveless fingers. He hadn't even noticed it. The blade penetrated the ground, and jutted up like a cruel monument.

As his body tumbled to the rough dirt, some grace of fate allowed him to land on his back with a dull thud, his head striking the harsh ground with a crack. The sky, that damned blue, danced with spots.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to weep. He still had breath- but even that was scarce. Something foreign in his mind informed him that a rib had probably pierced his lung. He would never laugh again. A truth. The fire worked his way through his body and he wanted to scream with it.

His lips worked, so he mouthed the words. "How could you."

And then answered, "Missing Nin."

He hadn't meant for it to happen. He had always meant to come back. He tried, tried with every part of himself that desired home. He had tried not to stare into the tattooed eyes. He had even tried not to listen when that horrible face had leaned in close and whispered things in his ear that he could not ignore.

_lie__ to yourself - coward_

Iruka shuddered again, a spasm starting from somewhere in his chest. He gasped, then coughed furiously. Blood began to leak out of his mouth. With some unknown force, Iruka managed to lift up a trembling arm, held the hand in front of his eyes. His eyes did not recognize it. The foreign black shapes across his skin jumped out at him through the red. It was beautiful.

He smiled.

Then Iruka found himself wondering dumbly why the sun was retreating so fast, when his eyes fluttered closed, and the horrible sounds ceased to pass from his lips. He shuddered, then stilled.

_Iruka felt the blade hit flesh, slid so smooth, blade thrummed, once, twice, silent_

What had been going through his mind as he turned, he did not know. Something possessed his legs, forced him to turn around, move forward one foot after the other. It made him run away from the truth, that he had known the face behind the animal mask, and the bloody kunai now stuck in the dirt was the monument to another truth, that he had come back. His head tilted lifelessly to the side, an errant strand of hair tossed with the breeze.

_sounds__ like thousands of birds…_


End file.
